We wrap up our noir season with one final episode, this one discussing the 1963 Peter Sellers movie The Pink Panther, and the series more generally, which spoofed many of the tropes of the noir/detective genres. We also look back at the season--what we learned from diving into the noir genre, and our favorite books.

We welcome Nadira Goffe (culture writer for Slate) to talk about a Black, Southern noir from S.A. Cosby. We learn about Nadira's love of the Fast and the Furious franchise, her fear of actual driving, and her mixed feelings about an over-the-top metaphor. Plus: Mike gets pedantic about dialogue tags, and Tom realizes there's a limit to how many car-chase sequences he's willing to read in a novel. Vroom vroom!

We welcome back best-selling crime novelist Tod Goldberg to talk about one of his favorite books, by one of his favorite authors. Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel was the basis for the 2012 film of the same name, which netted Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar nomination at the age of 20. The movie is a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel, though the book's musical language and rich detail make it worth a read even for those who've seen the film. 

We're joined by novelist and high-school music teacher Daniel DiFranco (Panic Years, Devil on My Trail) to discuss the Margaret Millar novel Do Evil in Return, a staple of the noir genre. We talk about the line between serious and campy, how to move plot forward in a novel, and the difficulty of endings. 

We welcome Joanna Pearson (author, most recently, of Bright and Tender Dark), who makes the case that we should put Mary Gaitskill's short stories in the "noir" category--or at least mark them as noir-adjacent. We discuss two specific Gaitskill stories, "The Other Place" and "The Girl on the Plane," as well as the particular darkness of the Gaitskill universe.

We're joined by Steph Cha (author of Your House Will Pay) to talk about a famous California hardboiled novel none of us had ever read. What will it took us about tramps, insurance fraud, and the relative difficulty of staging a fake car-related murder? And what's the deal with that postman, with his infernal ringing? 

We're joined by comedian and writer Charlie Demers to discuss a novel that the famous crime writer Donald Westlake finished in the early '80s but which wasn't published until after his death. At the time, he apparently worried that the plot--about a famous comedian kidnapped by a Weather Underground-style group of revolutionaries--was too similar to the Martin Scoresese movie The King of Comedy.

he 1947 Dorothy Hughes novel In a Lonely Place is considered a hallmark of the noir genre, and also something of a feminist reimagining of those genre's tropes. We're joined by Isaac Butler (author of The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act) to talk about some of the book's narrative tricks, including an unreliable third-person narrator, and how it subverts the genre's "femme fatale" trope, among others. Plus: What made Dorothy Hughes think that 'Brub' was a good name for a character?

In the second half of the show, we learn about Isaac's relationship to Halloween costumes, which Muppet could play a hardboiled cop, and why Isaac thinks he's too old to read Slaughterhoue Five for the first time.

We're back! This episode kicks off a new season of the podcast, and this one's all about noir. In our first installment, guest Sarah Weinman (author of Scoundrel, and The Real Lolita) joins us to discuss a Patricia Highsmith novel, The Blunderer, about a rather hapless man who, despite not actually killing his wife, manages to convince nearly everyone that he has

In the final episode of our "marriage plot" season, we welcome fan favorite Dave Housley (author, most recently, of The Other Ones, and founding editor of Barrelhouse Magazine) to talk about a book that updated the 19th-century marriage plot novel for the 1990s: Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.

We couldn't do a season on "the marriage plot" in literature without reading the Jeffrey Eugenides novel that's literally titled The Marriage Plot. Guest Lucas Mann (author, most recently, of the essay collected Attachments, and co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore and Bar in Providence, Rhode Island) joins us to discuss Eugenides' novel, which contains a "marriage plot" while also being a kind of meta-commentary on marriage plots. Plus: Is the book's clinically depressed, bandana-wearing character meant to be David Foster Wallace? How does Lucas employ "power poses" to sell books? And is there anything worse than a cash-bar wedding?

Poet and novelist Beth Ann Fennelly (Heating & Cooling, The Tilted World) joins us to talk about an unconventional love story, Harrison Scott Key's How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. We talk about learning life lessons from memoirs, how to write about difficult relationships--especially when you're still in them--and Beth Ann's experience of writing a novel collaboratively with her husband. Plus: Mike's pre-marriage angst about wedding rental companies, and why it costs so much to rent a chair.

We continue our "marriage plot" season with guest Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, American Wife, Romantic Comedy) who talks us through one of her favorite Alice Munro stories, why she admires it, and how it's influenced her own work. Plus: Are trains romantic? Is some writing trying too hard to be sexy? And what's the ideal bathroom situation for a marriage?

Our "marriage plot" season continues, but with a twist: on this episode, novelist Peter Ho Davies introduces us to "the parent plot," which he argues is a contemporary successor to all those 19th-century novels about choosing a mate. For many, becoming a parent is not only one of life's biggest choices, but also a cultural marker of adult responsibility and growing up. As an example, we dive into Ben Lerner's 2014 novel, 10:04, about a writer trying to finish his next book and also decide whether to father a child with his platonic best friend.

Our season on "the marriage plot" continues, with author Tyrese Coleman (How to Sit) joining us to talk about the first book in the Outlander series, which is one of the most popular historical fantasy romance novels ever written. She tries to help us understand why people find it sexy, rather than tedious. We also talk about the book's relationship to various genre tropes, and Ty tells us about the time she got banned from a Facebook fan group for suggesting some of the novel's characters were a little racist.

Our "marriage plot" season continues, with freelance writer and podcaster Catherine Nichols joining us to talk about the "least fun" Bronte sister, and her novel about what happens when you marry a drunken frat boy (or whatever the 19th-century equivalent of a frat was)

We kick off our new, 8-episode season on "the marriage plot" in literature with guest Adelle Waldman (The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Help Wanted) talking to us about one of her favorite authors, Jane Austen.

We welcome writer and editor Michael Tager (Mason Jar Press; Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection ) to talk about Mindy Kaling's essay collection Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Tager read Kaling's book during a period when he was reading a lot of memoirs and essay collections by comedians, including books by Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler. He talks about what made Kaling's stand out, and how his usual reading habits were interrupted by fatherhood.

We're joined by Sal Pane--author, most recently, of the short story collection The Neorealist in Winter (winner of the 2002 Autumn House fiction prize) to discuss a pair of novellas by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. Plus: writing for video games, surviving winter, and cuffing season.

It's a fan favorite every year: we choose a (possibly terrible) Christmas novel, and we invite some of our fellow Barrelhouse editors on to discuss it. This year the book was A Christmas Memory, by the "king of Christmas fiction," Richard Paul Evans. And our guests include Dave Housley, Becky Barnard, Chris Gonzalez, and Joe Killiany!